This is so utterly retarded it's the worst troll attempt I've ever seen. Bible doesn't command Christians to brush their teeth, so we should not brush our teeth people. It wouldn't be Christian. It's not in the Bible. It's not un-Biblical and that is the worst kind of wrong there is.

My BRAND!:Each and everyone of those classes can perform very different roles, depending on the player managing them. Combat mages, melee based clerics, ranged fighters, acrobat rogues, necromancer wizards.

If you need cool downs in your rule set to help your players find some variety, then your players are terribly unimaginative, or your DM is. Try having a wizard memorize nothing but fireball and any competent DM will punish him with fire immune creatures, counter spelling enemy wizards, anti magic zones, wild magic zones or a well placed silenced cross bow bold to his torso. Try being creative and not letting your players go full munchkin on you. There is a reason there is a vast array of spells available.

Dungeons and Dragons is not difficult to learn, but is complicated enough to provide the clever and imaginative player with endless hours of play. It doesn't need to be simplified and dumbed down as that can be done by each group according to their wants and needs. If you want simple and straightforward, don't allow extra source books beyond the dungeon master;s guide, player's handbook and monster manual.

This all ignores, of course, that combat is not necessary for a good role-playing experience. 4th ed. seems to be all about combat. That's it. F*ck role-playing.

You can easily run a 3E game that is not focused on combat, and a well developed campaign world leaves a lot of room for exploration and research.

Still play it at least once a year for a good three-month campaign. Nothing else comes close to how well they combined modern age with high fantasy.

/Memorable plots: Protecting an ArchLich (the Lawful Good kind) running for President from his opponent, who was a member of Tyr's Sect. We failed.

I ran a campaign where the Stock Exchange was being magically hacked by a high-level Cybermage. The party took him out in two sessions.

UNK (United Nations and Kingdoms) peacekeeping duties in Nuallia (the country ran by Drow and under near-constant power struggles and upheaval) which resulted in having them have to fight off a near-full-powered Lolth trying to enter the world. Two made it out alive.

Guarding a set of 13 books from a series of assaults by mercenaries and covert forces, under strict rules not, NOT to open the chest they were in. End of the campaign we finally met who was paying us and what the books were: The Tomes of Fistandantilus. Raistlin was trying to amass power to take down Elminster for control of The University of Thaumaturgical Sciences.

Fighting a group of Frost Giants in the Northwest Territories.

The looks on our faces when our INT 7 Ranger decided to acquire a totem animal (who actually became the most bad-ass NPC we had in our party): A pound animal named "Kitty". "Kitty" was a Displacer Beast. We told him that was a "bad Kitty" and were scolded for being jerks and 'cat-haters'. "Kitty" (Khaitti) wound up saving our asses twice. The way it talked, though, was the clincher of having it stay for combat and entertainment value: "HUMAN! I demand a belly-rub!", "I. DO. NOT. EAT. CHEESEBURGERS!", "DAMMIT! YOU STUPID HUMANS! How did you fall for THAT?! Now, excuse me, someone has left me a plate of Bluefin as appeasement... ::thud:: ::snoooore:::"

Having our U.S. Templar (see: Marine) wind up discovering an old Vietnam-era M-16, and being forced to grab and use it after his ran out of ammo - and watching a 20th Century Holy Avenger take out four ogres in reactive armor. (Not as cool as the inscription the DM put on the stock: "A hero's strength comes not from anger, but from defiance.")

Going toe-to-toe with a Chromatic Red Great Wyrm on The Strip in Las Vegas. That was the last one we played a few months ago.A character who played a Lawful Good Illithid... who worshipped Cthulhu."Really! It'll be better! No more pain or suffering, we all get to stop fighting among each other! How is that BAD?!""Well, for one, we're ALL DEAD."He also had to buy his food off of the Internet, mainly cow brains.

Sid_6.7:4th1st ed. seems to be all about combat. That's it. F*ck role-playing.

FTFY

D&D has always been defined by walking into dungeons and killing dragons - it's in the goddamn name, fer Christ sake. If you are looking for combat-less wanking, I hear WW LARPs are always looking for new players; you can portray your social-outcast mentally-conflicted self-pitying dark elf dual-scimitar-wielding ranger* with a bunch of social-outcast mentally-conflicted self-pitying Toreador wastrel vampires - just be sure to sanitize after you clean up the spooge. 1st and 4th just assume you are competent enough to do what every 4 year-old does effortlessly, without needing special rules, and provides rules for what every 4 year-old sucks at, i.e. resolving conflict in a fair manner. I, personally, was able to quite happily inhabit a character way back before they even put an A in front of D&D; I don't need hand-holding to interact socially.

* Seriously, why did TSR not just create the Drizzt race-class and save 80+% of D&D players in the 90s the trouble of filling out more than 1 word on their character sheets?

Sid_6.7:Weaver95: no, i'm sorry but...that is completely wrong. 4th edition D&D feels like and plays like a table top version of an MMO. same mechanics, same cooldowns, same party make up (tank, healer, ranged DPS, melee DPS and a hybrid class for support role). pathfinder is probably the best evolution of 3.x rules. it's clear, works well, and scales well up to level 20. I especially liked how they handled sorcerers in pathfinder. and the newer classes (alchemist, gunslinger, witch to name a few) fit well for people who want to play a non-standard game.

When 3E came out, I could flip through the book, and it felt like D&D. There was enough continuity with 2nd ed. 4th ed. did not have that same feel for me.

So much makes no goddamn sense in 4th ed. Healing bursts, or whatever they're called. Everyone can suddenly not have been stabbed several times per day? Every thief/rogue is just as good at all thief-type skills as every other one, since they were all combined under a single skill?

Abilities you can only use once per 'encounter'? Can you imagine the philosophers of that world trying to figure out why they could only use an ability at intervals defined by some apparently arbitrary conceptual limit?

How about only being able to use a spell once per day and only if you prepared them in advance? That to me makes about as much sense as "per encounter". Either one is a game mechanic.

Healing surges were a little odd, I just RP'd them as a simple health potion any moron could make from common herbs. It was done to alleviate the need for a cleric.

4ed is a very fun edition and I loved it's streamlined features, much better than 3.x, I am afraid in the new edition they'll get rid of a lot of the innovations of 4ed because of whiners.

D&D has always been defined by walking into dungeons and killing dragons - it's in the goddamn name, fer Christ sake. If you are looking for combat-less wanking, I hear WW LARPs are always looking for new players; you can portray your social-outcast mentally-conflicted self-pitying dark elf dual-scimitar-wielding ranger* with a bunch of social-outcast mentally-conflicted self-pitying Toreador wastrel vampires - just be sure to sanitize after you clean up the spooge. 1st and 4th just assume you are competent enough to do what every 4 year-old does effortlessly, without needing special rules, and provides rules for what every 4 year-old sucks at, i.e. resolving conflict in a fair manner. I, personally, was able to quite happily inhabit a character way back before they even put an A in front of D&D; I don't need hand-holding to interact socially.

* Seriously, why did TSR not just create the Drizzt race-class and save 80+% of D&D players in the 90s the trouble of filling out more than 1 word on their character sheets?

Drizzt is a farking clown and horribly written. Salvatore did a better job with Wulfgar over all his characters because the dude at least had some flaws. Not at the beginning, no. But after he was resurrected and broken he got interesting. Bruenor, Cattie-Brie, Entreri, and Drizzt read like characters that got played after the DM let them roll all 18's on their stats and gave them a +3 bonus to each because the player was their buddy along with some insanely OP magic weapons. Then and only then did he let them start playing the game.

What a hypocrite my youth pastor was. He was always preaching about how D&D was satanic because it had magic and dragons in it, but then he had no problem with LotR or the Chronicles of Narnia, because "Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were Christians." People just love to hate on any medium that they don't have a taste to get entertainment from, as if it's some sort of principle.

Raharu:Most Christians don't actually read the bible, and the ones that do cherry pick the hell out of it.

Christmas is a secular seasonal holiday now for the most part anyway.

Exactly. That's what happens when you try to force your religious holidays on the general population, they get watered down until they are pretty much are meaningless. Here's a tip for all the religious people out there. If you want your holidays to stay religious, then keep them in your churches. As soon as you try to impose them on everyone else they will lose their religious significance.

elchip:I really liked 3.5ed; it was fairly well balanced, and had a lot of things that made sense. It just needed a few tweaks to make it just about perfect.

Umm, no it was in no farming way well balanced. The pub alone had core problems and the more supplements you added the worse it got. I have seen house riles lists several pages long just addressing problems that had occurred in the game sessions.

Also with regards to healing serves they make sense if you actually know what HP was representing for the last oh 20 years, unfortunately most never bothered to learn that part of the rules, and just made a false assumption.

Marine1:It wouldn't exist as Christmas if it weren't for Christianity.

Yes, the Christians can take credit for the name. They also get the nativity. Congratulations. Every other element about Christmas, from the decorations to the giving of gifts arises from older traditions.

tzzhc4:Quantum Apostrophe: "From an early age, Gygax hunted and was a target-shooter with both bow and gun.[65] He was also an avid gun collector, and at various times owned a variety of rifles, shotguns, and handguns.[66]"

Where in the Bible does it command that?

Jesus was the holiest man to ever slap iron! He killed for your sins. (Remington 3:16)

t3knomanser:Marine1: It wouldn't exist as Christmas if it weren't for Christianity.

Yes, the Christians can take credit for the name. They also get the nativity. Congratulations. Every other element about Christmas, from the decorations to the giving of gifts arises from older traditions.

Also, obligatory.

Those older traditions would not have been combined into what you call Christmas if some group hadn't stepped up to do so. That's the point.

Marine1:Those older traditions would not have been combined into what you call Christmas if some group hadn't stepped up to do so. That's the point.

Holy crap...you have no concept of history, do you? A bunch of Christians didn't get together on a Thursday night and decide, "Hey, let's co-opt aspects of the winter solstice celebrations from a handful of different cultures across different times in history, stick 'em all together and call it Christmas!"

You mean like fighter, cleric, thief, magic-user, and elf? And the cooldowns are there to encourage you to use multiple powers - as opposed to 3.x, where the standard wizard spell selection was fireball, fireball, fireball, bigger fireball, hotter fireball, fireball rules with the damage type switched out for acid, delayed blat fireball, fireball with longer range and the damage type switched to cold, moronically rolling fireball, etc., etc.(or, you could just go full warlock* and just spam tard-blast infinitely). About the only thing they stole from MMOs that wasn't stole from them first was quick healing; and let's face it, I want to play heroic dungeon-crawl, not heroic ICU visit (if nothing else, the Balor can be beaten, unlike the health insurance rep).

Personally, I would have preferred they kept both lines, but D&D has always been the gateway drug of roleplaying. 3.x had some very nice features, but had a learning curve that was effectively a straight vertical, and was littered with hidden pitfalls for those who couldn't game out a character to level 20 at the beginning (simply selecting paladin as your class comes to find as the big one). 4e is a much simpler and more forgiving game. i don't care that there are no skills for chartered accountants, and that wizard is no longer the only class that matters - I want to be able to explain the game mechanics in less than a fortnight, and get someone hooked before the Cheetos high wears off. Now, the Essentials thing mucked thing sup, and one would hope that 5e would unify and tighten the rule-set, though everything I hear sounds like they are making zombie 3.x for the smallest subset of basement-dwellers possible.

* the class built for those who thought sorcerer was too complicated to play

3.x

What wow I think you had the most unimaginative group ever. First it is fairly widely agreed that it is a toss up between Cleric and Druid as to which is the more powerful class. Personally I feel that it depends on which expansion books are allowed and what setting is used, between those two. Both have a far higher chance of surviving through the first five levels when the wizard is fairly unuseful. Both also can be far more useful to the party, and with healing give the other party members a reason to be a meatshield.

Next the spell selection of fireball is silly and unimaginative. Its mainly handy only in massed battles the kind that adventuring parties really shouldn't be involved in very often. Its kind of a non effective spell with all the things that have evasion and fire resistance at levels you can spam cast it. Ray spells are more effective against small number of opponents if you must go for direct damage, and usually manipulation of the environment, or control of the enemy is more effective.

Maxor:Next the spell selection of fireball is silly and unimaginative. Its mainly handy only in massed battles the kind that adventuring parties really shouldn't be involved in very often. Its kind of a non effective spell with all the things that have evasion and fire resistance at levels you can spam cast it. Ray spells are more effective against small number of opponents if you must go for direct damage, and usually manipulation of the environment, or control of the enemy is more effective.

Well, the fireball thing was meant to be hyperbolic. Though in my defense, it didn't seem like any new spell list could be published in 2e and 3e without one spell being a poorly hidden re-skin of fireball - though that was a better proposition in 3e than 2e, since 2e fireballs deformed to fill their entire listed volume, which meant, technically, a mage could flambe many entire small-to-mid-size dungeons with one spell (and unavoidably crisp himself. Though nothing beats the chicken trick in 1e.

That's why you get a ring of fire resistance for everyone in the party. You wanna dance with the mage, you'd best dance fast.

Also, there were a ton of third level spells that were infinitely useful. So fireball was usually a once a day. And with the 10d6 damage limit it was really only good for lesser critters anyway. But if you launched it in a goblin tunnel....

Teufelaffe:Marine1: Those older traditions would not have been combined into what you call Christmas if some group hadn't stepped up to do so. That's the point.

Holy crap...you have no concept of history, do you? A bunch of Christians didn't get together on a Thursday night and decide, "Hey, let's co-opt aspects of the winter solstice celebrations from a handful of different cultures across different times in history, stick 'em all together and call it Christmas!"

... did I say they did it in one night?

No.

Christianity spread over the centuries, and as time went on, it picked up more things from the different lands it moved across and adapted those things to Christian theology.

So, yeah, of course different traditions have contributed to Christmas. Christianity, however, rolled them into one major tradition.

Sort of like how English mugs other languages in dark alleys, steals their words, and leaves them for dead. It works, though.

Marine1:Teufelaffe: Marine1: Those older traditions would not have been combined into what you call Christmas if some group hadn't stepped up to do so. That's the point.

Holy crap...you have no concept of history, do you? A bunch of Christians didn't get together on a Thursday night and decide, "Hey, let's co-opt aspects of the winter solstice celebrations from a handful of different cultures across different times in history, stick 'em all together and call it Christmas!"

... did I say they did it in one night?

No.

Christianity spread over the centuries, and as time went on, it picked up more things from the different lands it moved across and adapted those things to Christian theology.

So, yeah, of course different traditions have contributed to Christmas. Christianity, however, rolled them into one major tradition.

Sort of like how English mugs other languages in dark alleys, steals their words, and leaves them for dead. It works, though.

What the fark does "it works" mean?

It works to steal other culture's ideals to coerce them into the religion? that's sick.

Christianity is no longer followed, its some kind of farked up amalgam of different theological beliefs that are seemingly approved by market research.

It isn't a religion, it's a marketing ploy no better than the cult of Scientology/Mormonism

Marine1:Those older traditions would not have been combined into what you call Christmas if some group hadn't stepped up to do so.

The Christians didn't "combine" diverse traditions. Europe is a small place- the traditions were already largely similar across the continent- and despite regional variations, remain largely similar today. At best, you could give credit to the Victorians for laying out what the Anglo variation of Christmas is.

Girion47:Marine1: Teufelaffe: Marine1: Those older traditions would not have been combined into what you call Christmas if some group hadn't stepped up to do so. That's the point.

Holy crap...you have no concept of history, do you? A bunch of Christians didn't get together on a Thursday night and decide, "Hey, let's co-opt aspects of the winter solstice celebrations from a handful of different cultures across different times in history, stick 'em all together and call it Christmas!"

... did I say they did it in one night?

No.

Christianity spread over the centuries, and as time went on, it picked up more things from the different lands it moved across and adapted those things to Christian theology.

So, yeah, of course different traditions have contributed to Christmas. Christianity, however, rolled them into one major tradition.

Sort of like how English mugs other languages in dark alleys, steals their words, and leaves them for dead. It works, though.

What the fark does "it works" mean?

It works to steal other culture's ideals to coerce them into the religion? that's sick.

Christianity is no longer followed, its some kind of farked up amalgam of different theological beliefs that are seemingly approved by market research.

It isn't a religion, it's a marketing ploy no better than the cult of Scientology/Mormonism

Sure it is.

I'll let the anthropologists know sometime tomorrow. Boy, will that throw them for a loop.

Moodybastard:tzzhc4: Quantum Apostrophe: "From an early age, Gygax hunted and was a target-shooter with both bow and gun.[65] He was also an avid gun collector, and at various times owned a variety of rifles, shotguns, and handguns.[66]"

Where in the Bible does it command that?

Jesus was the holiest man to ever slap iron! He killed for your sins. (Remington 3:16)

Praise Alvis and pass the whiskey

Crap screamer! You are forgetting the true meaning of Alvis Time. Niether is it ham nor pomp - nay, the true meaning of Alvis Time... is drinking. Drinking and revenge.